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Re: Summer bees vs winter bees?

Is that like saying everything would be easy if it wasn't for all that difficult stuff?

sort of dan. it's like saying that many thousands of people lose their life in automobile accidents each year, so the obvious solution is to ban automobiles.

i am always for coming up with new technology that improves the quality of life, especially if it comes with less risk and more benefit than the current technology.

i don't make my living in agriculture or by keeping bees, but what i hear from those on the forum that do both is the neonics are an improvement over what was being used before. i hope we'll have something even better and safer some day.

and if the solution for those opposing systemics is that society should regress back to chemical free, while good in theory, it's not likely to happen.

journaling the growth of a treatment free apiary started in 2010. 20+/- hives

Re: Summer bees vs winter bees?

If neonics kill bees....every colony very near huge fields of treated seed....will die...is that correct? Or do the bees fly over those crops because they know of the danger?

That would be saying that we have the pesticide that is 100% effective. It simply does not work that way. Bees that have better forage will choose that forage. so bees that are near crops using Neonics but not effected could simply be due to other forage available. It could be that bees effected but at a slower rate so it is not so obvious. It could be that neonics really do not effect bees. I find it hard to believe an insecticide does not effect a single specific insect. Not that it can't be true. but it woudl have to be explained in detail to me. otherwise by default an insecticide kills insects. bees are insects. it is the obvious conclusion.

Re: Summer bees vs winter bees?

Originally Posted by Daniel Y

That would be saying that we have the pesticide that is 100% effective. It simply does not work that way. Bees that have better forage will choose that forage. so bees that are near crops using Neonics but not effected could simply be due to other forage available. It could be that bees effected but at a slower rate so it is not so obvious. It could be that neonics really do not effect bees. I find it hard to believe an insecticide does not effect a single specific insect. Not that it can't be true. but it woudl have to be explained in detail to me. otherwise by default an insecticide kills insects. bees are insects. it is the obvious conclusion.

OK, lets say that it's only 50% effective as far as bees are concerned...would 50% of the colonies die out? Yes...it's true that some insecticides only effect a certain variety of insects. Can't explain it in detail either....but is this not true.. that 50% would die?

Re: Summer bees vs winter bees?

It could be that neonics really do not effect bees. I find it hard to believe an insecticide does not effect a single specific insect.

I don't think anybody is saying that neonicitinoids will not kill bees. Particularly when they have been shown to kill bees in a laboratory.

The debate is wether neonicitinoids are behind the "epidemic", of CCD. This is suspected, but not proved.

The reason being promoted, is that neonicitiniods were introduced, then we started getting CCD. So, it must be neonicitinoids causing it. Faulty logic though. If true, why do we not have CCD in my country, where neonicitinoids are widely used?

A similar type faulty argument has been promoted about varroa mites. In a well known book on top bar beekeeping, it is stated that bees were varroa mite free until after the introduction of the langstroth hive. Therefore varroa mites are caused by the langstroth hive. Another well known author claims that because varroa mites infested our bees around the globe after we invented comb foundation, varroa mites must be caused by comb foundation. Whereas to me, the obvious reason for the spread of varroa mites is because we now ship bees from one place to another.

Most people would be totally fine to accept that neonicitinoids cause CCD, if it could be proven, but thus far, it hasn't.

A while back I asked on the commercial forum what those guys think about CCD. I figured they own lots of hives and are in a position to make a better judgement. The answer came back from some, that if they keep their varroa mites under control, CCD is a non issue.

Some years back there was a well known murder case that was widely publicised. It seemed open and shut, and the family of the victim appeared on TV voicing their contempt and hatred of the accused. But just before the end of the trial, the real murderer was identified and the case against the first accused was dropped. But the family of the victim, could not accept it. They had become so obsessed with their hatred of the first accused and their need to pin blame, that they never let it go and felt that him being released was a miscarriage of justice.
In a similar way, some people have just "decided", that neonicitinoids cause CCD.

Re: Summer bees vs winter bees?

Originally Posted by oldforte

OK, lets say that it's only 50% effective as far as bees are concerned...would 50% of the colonies die out? Yes...it's true that some insecticides only effect a certain variety of insects. Can't explain it in detail either....but is this not true.. that 50% would die?

To be honest I am not sure. I will have to think on this a bit. I have been doing a cut out yesterday and today on top of a full days work yesterday. Not bowing out just I am tired and not all the gears are turning. I will say this. percentages are a strange beast. IN the long run they will work out. but in a given sample they will not hold true and can actually deviate wildly. the smaller the sample the wider the variation. Flipping a coin is a 50 50 chance or a 50% likelyhood. You can also call it a 1 to 1 odds. SO if you have heads and I have tails. you will pay me $1 for every time a tail is flipped and I will pay you $1 for every head. we will in the long run just simply pass the same dollar bills back and forth. But what if we only flip once? what if we flip only 10 times and 7 times it comes up heads and 3 times it comes out tails. that is a very realistic result of a 50 50 chance with only 10 repetitions.

The next time there are 10 flips it may very well be the other way around. 3 heads 7 tails. So in the short term on a 50% 50% you could actually see a huge difference. like 70 to 80 % losses one year. nearly none another. Over time. very much time you will begin to see that 50 50 emerge. Even my explanation is simplified and it actually takes thousands of repetitions for the percentage to hold true.

This could be seen in beekeepers in that one says they see lots of losses and one says they see few or even none. And this would always be true on a case by case basis.

Re: Summer bees vs winter bees?

Originally Posted by squarepeg

that would be a perfect world!

but since it's not, what alternatives are those who oppose the use of systemic neonics putting forth?

What voice do they actually have, until there is actual measurable damage done to the hives, the movement is based on feelings and philosophy.
Of all the attention to Neonics and all the motivation to find some kind of correlation, if the evidence was there, dont you think these anit chemical lobby groups would of pounced on it ? All that I have seen are flawed biased studies. If the facts are there, bring them out!

The alternative is, what, . ? Bring back the crop duster? because that is the alternative,

They can talk and talk and talk, its getting to the point where its all the same talk, its all skimmed over. Give us the facts

Re: Summer bees vs winter bees?

There's no argument that neonics can kill bees. Feeding them to bees and bees die is no big revelation. I'm still waiting for studies that show real damage from real world situations. there are too many reports of bees doing well beside large acreages of corn and/or canola for me to believe that they are worse than the organophosphates that we used in the past. As Ian said, "do you want to go back to the days of crop-dusters?' Or maybe you want farmers to go broke and the world starve.

Re: Neonic facts

In the case of field corn there isn't a whole lot of pollen to be gathered and bees will work it only when there is nothing else to be found. I heard a talk on this at AHPA from a researcher who placed some hives in Nebraska in the middle of miles of irrigated corn and found a high percentage of hives that had no traces of corn pollen in the hives.. He said that it was a result of breeding. Not so with sweet corn, though, which was found to contain much more pollen.

Re: Neonic facts

Yes as a general rule, plants that are wind pollinated have a very low nutrient pollen that is not beneficial to bees, it has to be this way to make the pollen grains as light as possible. Bees can mostly detect this, although I have seen bees gathering pollen from wind pollinated pine trees, this at a time when there were few options.

To me, it is not impossible that bees could collect contaminated pollen from something that's been sprayed with a systemic insecticide, including neonics. There is scant evidence though, but it's something I feel we should be aware of it could be from beekeepers own observations that breakthroughs are made.

Jim, were that researchers hives in a situation where they suffered pollen shortage but still did not collect the corn pollen? If so, that would help eliminate corn pollen as a danger although of course it's just one experiment.

Re: Neonic facts

OT: What I remember was that they brought very strong hives into an area saturated with corn to study whether the pollen that was gathered had any traces of neonics and if so at what concentrations they were found. They were, however, surprised at how difficult it was to find any corn pollen whatsoever in the hives and that the amounts they did detect were pretty insignificant. The researchers made the casual observation that walking through the corn was a whole different experience than it was 20 years ago when the pollen was thick in the air when disturbed. It seems a bit odd to me that lower pollen content would be consistent with higher corn yields.

"People will generally accept facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe."- Andy Rooney